Pre-kids, we used to regularly make a dish we called ‘Greg’s chicken’. We’ve mentioned it on here in the past, though you’ll have to forgive us for not digging through the archives to figure out which post it was in. The reason it was dubbed Greg’s chicken is because the recipe (actually entitled Ginger and Peanut Spiced Chicken) came from a YouTube channel called Greg’s Kitchen, hosted by a slightly bonkers Aussie bloke who sometimes made some delicious dishes and sometimes made more questionable things like pizza using leftover KFC. Greg is still around on YouTube, although he seems to have steered more towards food reviews than actually cooking his own stuff these days.
But why are we going on about Greg? Well, the sauce for ‘Greg’s chicken’ was made from sriracha (hence why it was a pre-kids meal), peanut butter, soy sauce, tomato puree, chicken stock, ginger and garlic. If you read the recipe below for Liberian peanut soup (or peanut stew, depending on which recipe you read), you’ll observe that it contains many of the same ingredients. Given that Liberians serve their peanut soup with rice, and we used to always serve Greg’s chicken with rice, it really did feel like we were eating the sauce from our old favourite dinner without the substance.
Peanut soup
Ingredients
1/2 cup (or more) of creamy peanut butter
3 tbsp cooking oil
1 tin of tomatoes (the recipe said 8oz, we only had 16oz but it seemed to work OK)
1 onion, diced
1 tbsp minced garlic
1-2 habanero peppers, diced
2 vegetable stock cubes soaked in 2 1/2 cups of water
Additional 1/2 cup of water
Salt and pepper to taste|
Rice and toasted ground sesame seeds, to serve
Method
1. Heat the oil in a stockpot over medium heat.
2. Add the chopped onion and saute until it turns a light golden brown colour.
3. Add the garlic and stir fry for a few minutes.
4. Add the tinned tomatoes and stir to combine, then stir fry until the liquid has evaporated.
5. Add the peanut butter (as much as you want, basically – we’d recommend even more than the 1/2 cup in the recipe if you like peanut butter) and stir until combined and smooth.
6. Gradually add the vegetable stock while stirring continuously, and keep stirring until the tomatoes and peanut butter are dissolved into the broth.
7. Simmer for 2 minutes, then add the other 1/2 cup of water.
8. Season to taste, then add the habanero and stir to combine.
9. Bring to the boil, then boil for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent it from sticking.
10. Serve with rice and sesame seeds.
Serves 4
Not many photos this time because there really wasn’t much to it. It was nice to have something that wasn’t a chicken stew for a change, but whilst there’s no reason to feel like this wasn’t a full meal (it had protein from the peanuts, carb from the rice and veg from the tomato), it just didn’t seem complete. That’s not to say that it wasn’t tasty: we enjoyed it, particularly after adding sriracha in an homage to Greg’s chicken, and we weren’t hungry afterwards, so having said that, it probably did everything a dinner is supposed to do. Everything, we suppose, except actually excite us.
Nor did it excite our children (who both eat peanut butter like it’s going out of fashion), one of whom who refused to try it at all and one who tried it once but then didn’t go back for seconds. Sigh.
Incidentally, apparently this is also commonly eaten in Gambia, but the Gambian version would incorporate more vegetables – so more like the other stews we’ve been eating recently. We think the texture of the vegetables (not to mention the variety of flavour) would have made this more of a hit. But we do fully acknowledge that it’s our European palates making that judgement, and there was nothing at all wrong with the flavour of this one.
Good Food on Bad Plates 